Events

This seminar has been cancelled.

Jointly organised by the Migration Cluster of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Disaster response can involve extreme physical and digital mobilities, breeding ‘mobile utopia’ of agility, speed, security. In the aftermath of the 2015 Germanwings crash, for example, hundreds of emergency personnel from local and international agencies converged to scour two square miles of steep, rocky terrain for debris and DNA. Surrounding such physical mobilities are often myriad efforts to mobilise information and coordinate actions through digital technologies. New capabilities for disaster risk management that emerge in this context can be very positively utopian, but they also raise complex ethical, legal and social, dystopian challenges. In collaborative research with practitioners, information technology developers and interdisciplinary teams of researchers, my colleagues and I explore and shape futures of disaster risk management and the im|material im|mobilities of data. This takes the form of engaged ‘speculative’ sociology and involves a mixture of mobile methods, including participant observation and participant intervention, ways of ‘following the information’, affirmative critique, disclosive ethics, ‘mobilising’ utopia as method, ethical and privacy impact assessment. These methods are a means for ‘staying with the trouble’ of often ambiguous emergent ‘intra-actions’ and effects. In this talk I provide examples and explore how mobile utopia and mobile methods may be useful in building practically as well as theoretically fruitful understandings of digitally-suffused life.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Monika Büscher is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, Director of the Centre for Mobilities Research and Associate Director at the Institute for Social Futures. Her research explores the digital dimension of contemporary ‘mobile lives’ with a focus on IT ethics and risk governance. She combines qualitative, ethnographic studies, social theory, and design through mobile, ‘inventive’ methods, and stakeholder engagement. Her interdisciplinary, experimental, engaged ‘public sociology’ explores and shapes socio-technical futures. She leads research on the informationalization of risk governance, exploring opportunities and challenges in national and international projects (BRIDGE, SecInCoRe). Her theoretical orientation builds on mobilities research, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, science and technology studies, feminist and non-representational theory, and design research. In 2011 she received an honorary doctorate for her work in participatory design from Roskilde University, Denmark. She edits the book series Changing Mobilities (Routledge) with Peter Adey.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you click on the “Register” button above to RSVP.